LOS ANGELES — Majel Barrett Roddenberry, the widow of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and an actress whose longtime association with the “Star Trek” franchise included playing Nurse Christine Chapel in the original series, died early Thursday morning. She was 76.

Mrs. Roddenberry died at her home in Bel-Air after a battle with leukemia, said family spokesman Sean Rossall.

“She was a valiant lady,” said Leonard Nimoy, who played Mr. Spock on “Star Trek.” “She worked hard, she was straightforward, she was dedicated to ‘Star Trek’ and Gene, and a lot of people thought very highly of her.”

Once dubbed “The First Lady of ‘Trek’ ” by the Chicago Tribune, Majel Barrett Roddenberry was associated with “Star Trek” from the beginning.

In the first TV pilot, she played a leading role as Number One, the First Officer who was second in command to Jeffrey Hunter’s Capt. Christopher Pike.

But at the request of various executives, changes were made and she did not reprise her role in the second TV pilot. Instead, she played the minor role of Nurse Chapel when the series began airing on NBC in September 1966.

Mrs. Roddenberry had another distinction: Beginning with the original series, she supplied the coolly detached voice of the USS Enterprise’s computer — something she did on the various “Star Trek” series.

She also was the voice of the Starship Enterprise for six of the 10 “Star Trek” movies that have been released, as well as the 11th, which is due out next year.

Mrs. Roddenberry also played Dr. Christina Chapel in two of the “Star Trek” movies, “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and “Star Trek: The Voyage Home.” And she played the recurring role of flamboyant Lwaxana Troi in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”

“Star Trek”‘ took off as a pop-culture phenomenon after it went into syndication, and Mrs. Roddenberry, who was married to Gene from 1969 until his death in 1991, attended her first “Star Trek” convention in 1972.

“You know, when the conventions started out, I’d attend four or five a month,” she said in the 2002 interview. “But after a while, it got where there was no time for anything else. You’d just travel from city to city, making the same speech, answering the same questions.”

Violent police encounters in California last year led to the deaths of 157 people and six officers, the state attorney general’s office said Thursday in a report that provides the first statewide tally on police use-of-force incidents.